


Electric Word

by innie



Series: Prince [4]
Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:53:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22219603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/innie/pseuds/innie
Summary: The Losers don't do well with rules.  Not even the super basic rules of a Secret Santa.
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez & Jake Jensen, Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez & William Roque, Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen, Franklin Clay & William Roque, Jake Jensen & Linwood "Pooch" Porteous, Jake Jensen & William Roque
Series: Prince [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/275067
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Electric Word

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Huntress79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Huntress79/gifts).



> These guys are fun to write!

"Okay," Roque said, nodding like he was willing himself to understand, "so why is this funny? Cause there's two languages on it?"

Jake paused in his folding, which, damn it, he still hadn't mastered, which meant that Jules was gonna get a wrinkly-ass birthday present. He should've waited for Cougs, who could fold the shirt so that the minute the box was opened (and all the little individually wrapped coffee-flavored candies from Indonesia were brushed aside) Jules could read _¡Annyong, Hermano!_ in that bright red font. "Yeah, kinda?" he said. "It's sort of a running joke on this show she got me hooked on." It worked on so many levels.

Roque made an unimpressed face — basically, his own face, turned up to eleven — and said, with deep and wounding skepticism, "Bro, is this a white-people thing?" Like the whole show was just watching a bowl of mayonnaise or the Yule Log.

"I . . . don't think so?" he finally said. He hadn't made Cougar watch _Arrested Development_ with him, but that was mostly because they had other things to do when they had some time together. Though at the moment, he couldn't think what could be better than being pressed up against his man, feeling his laughter shake them both. "Nope, definitely not," he said, bucked up by that image. "It is objectively hilarious. Why are you asking?"

Roque frowned at him. "Just being nice."

"What, like a new year's resolution?" he asked, shaking the shirt out and starting over. "You're about a month late."

Quick as a flash, Roque reached out and stole a candy while also — damn his speed, it wasn't fair that someone so big could also command that kind of quickness — smacking him upside the head. "Shut up."

"I'm telling Jules you stole her candy," he threatened, rubbing dramatically at the back of his head.

"Say hi to your sister for me," Roque said, and sauntered out of the room.

*

"Poochie-poo," Jake said, high on life because Pooch had to take leave to see his one and only but he got to go to sleep with Cougs every damn day. Poor Pooch. Pooch was basically his blood-brother, though, because Jolene was good at keeping her man in line and Jake was under no misapprehensions as to who the real boss was in his bed. "I want you to think about this and give me a real answer: was seeing your wife worth missing the Losers' Secret Santa?"

Pooch snorted like the world's most irritable hound dog. "Y'all didn't get any of that shit organized without me."

"We kinda did," Jake said, because late January was a fine time to be exchanging Christmas presents when they'd been staking out a tiny Pacific island on the actual day. "I drew your name," he continued — possibly violating the _secret_ part of the name, but whatever — and slapped down a small, festively wrapped box.

Cougar and Roque, playing Mexican Train Dominoes with maximum vindictiveness and absolutely no mercy, abandoned the game to see what the gift was. "Fellas," Pooch asked, "is he for real?"

Roque was eyeing the gift up like he thought it might hold a snake in a can. Pooch would probably have been able to handle that, but Jake wasn't going to give Roque any excuse to flash around knives the length of his arm. "He said $7 maximum and started drawing names out of a hat —"

"Era un sombrero estupido," Cougs interrupted, "y no era un gran plan." Jake spoke maybe three words of Spanish, but _estupido_ did not sound great.

Roque and Cougar slapped hands sideways. "Bro, just take the gift and we can all move on with our lives," Roque said.

Eyes narrowed threateningly at all of them, Jake corrected, "What I actually said was, $6.99 plus tax. And no coupons for hugs."

"Yeah, that's what I'd want to give you, Jay, a hug that lasts an hour. Is this actually secret SERE training, part two?" Pooch talked a big game, but his fingers were already itching to open his present, Jake could tell. The way he tore into the wrapping paper, not even appreciating the repeated image of Santa surfing, was the giveaway. "Aw, shit, this is great! Gonna be my good-luck charm!"

Cougar laughed when he saw the little bobblehead puppy, and Roque said, "Oh, it's like that," looking just the slightest bit impressed.

"Gentlemen," Jake said, bowing a little without getting up, "the bar has been raised. You're up."

*

Jake had had a plan — he _always_ had a plan — if he ended up drawing Cougs's name. He wasn't gonna get a little candy ring to stand in for the real thing or anything like that, because there wasn't a question to be asked; he knew he was spending the rest of his life loving Cougar and being an honorary Alvarez just like Cougs was up for being the coolest, hottest Jensen of all time. His plan was to get a big red velvet bow like the kind that hung at 12 o'clock on most wreaths— $6.50, so a bargain — and hang it off his dick instead.

Only now that Christmas was officially over, he couldn't find a single goddamn bow anywhere, like they'd all been whisked off to the North Pole to await another December, and Cougs would not be impressed with him just tying a shoelace around his cock, even if he did a proper bunny-ears bow with it.

Maybe he should just send Junebug the Wonder Woman shoelaces he'd scored at the dollar store.

*

Pooch was on top of his shit, Jake would give him that much. Within twenty-four hours, he'd worked out whose name hadn't been drawn and found a gift that made sense. Cougar was wearing a blissed-out face from the peppermint lotion he'd slathered all over his aching soles, uncaring that he had to wear booties made of green terrycloth that looked like Astroturf to keep the lotion where it should be.

The look on Cougs's face was so pleased that it made Jake shift a little in his chair, remembering what he'd done just last week in the shower to make Cougar glow ecstatically. Pooch and Roque had been playing dominoes, and Clay —

"Hey, where's our fearless leader been?" Jake asked. It'd been a couple of days at least since he'd seen the old grump.

Roque rubbed a thumb over his eyebrow and scowled down at his paperwork. "Some bastard up at HQ's been making noises about budgetary concerns, and so Clay's got a wad of papers with numbers on them to shove in his face."

That news pulled Pooch out from the depths of his sandwich and Cougs out from what really did look like post-coital lassitude. They both sat up a little, and Jake said, "Oh, yeah, that's gonna go _great_. They're gonna try to take my laptops away, send us in with just a slide rule by the time Clay's done fudging his way through that nonsense." He wanted to hug his devices a little closer.

Pooch, his mouth still full, said, "Why didn't he bring you with him? You're the one that knows all that shit."

"Above my pay grade," Roque said shortly. He answered Cougar's burst of rapid-fire Portuguese in kind and continued to go through the stack of paperwork. Jake looked, and Cougar's toes were flexing rapidly, which was as good as a jittery leg on anyone else. Roque was not a happy camper, which meant Cougs and Pooch weren't gonna be either, and Jake couldn't do a damn thing about any of it.

Except make a big production about whatever it was that Roque had gotten him. A package that was thoroughly rather than neatly wrapped was tossed his way. "Here. Outta my face, all of you."

As if that was gonna work on the Losers. Pooch jumped up and started making sandwiches for all of them, Cougar slinked his way over to the chair next to Roque's and pulled out a deck of cards from who the hell knew where, and Jake began ripping open his present. Or trying, anyway, but the thing was more duct tape than paper, and he got the feeling Roque was kind of enjoying watching him struggle. He had that silvery gunk under half his fingernails before Roque pulled out one of his knives and slid it over to him, then reconsidered and took both knife and package away from him. "C'mon!" he protested. "I was opening that!"

"Efficiency is the name of the game, Jay," Pooch said, drawing tight spirals of mustard on the slices of bread laid out before him.

"Here," Roque said, and handed over a ball of fire-engine red fabric. Jake shook it out and saw a stalking black cat — bigger and more lethal than a housekitty — on it. It wasn't a logo. It was original art, from the hand of one William Roque, who doodled like a motherfucker and had drawn, freehand, sketches of places they needed to infiltrate and people they needed to kill. The cougar on the shirt even had Cougs's little grin, somehow.

"Man," Jake said and held up a hand. When Roque took it, he used the grip to sneak his way into a hug. "This is awesome."

"I know. Outta my face, I said," Roque half-heartedly grumped, even as he began smiling at the hand that Cougar had dealt him.

*

He wore the shirt — just the shirt — to bed. Cougar was careful with it.

Cougar was not careful with him.

Cougar bit him up one side and down the other, jacked him off with ruthless efficiency, folded him basically in half to fuck him senseless, and then kissed him until he felt like his bones were melting.

And there was that little grin, the one he loved so much.

*

Cougar was a traitor. Cougs was _cooking for Clay_.

Never mind that it was Cougar's gift to Clay and he was bending the rules by claiming only special ingredients that wouldn't have been on the weekly list needed to stay under the seven-dollar limit. Never mind that they all took turns cooking for the group. Never mind that Clay was so inept that when his turn came he just ordered in from one of the places that could actually be bothered to jump through all the hoops required to deliver to them. Never mind that Clay had smoked his tastebuds down to nubs and wouldn't appreciate Cougar's culinary mastery. It was that Cougar _knew_ all of that — that Clay would probably be just as happy with a package of grocery-store wieners as with Cougs's ridiculously tender pulled pork — and was still going ahead with it. This, this was the power of the Secret Santa, and Jake resolved to wield it more responsibly in the future.

Of course he had to sit in the kitchen while Cougar was cooking, just to be able to watch him work, smiling and murmuring to himself. Clay was, for a wonder, sitting there too, but he was drinking steadily in that way that meant he couldn't get out of his own head. Pooch and Roque were officially testing vehicles to determine future requisitions and unofficially racing some assholes who always seemed to get pristine equipment.

He wondered if it was because of Clay's lack of charm — going by their superiors' judgment, not that of the sketchy women he attracted on every mission — or just their luck that they always got stuff that was on its last legs. He wondered if Clay knew what half his team was up to at that very moment, and if he did, if he would've told them not to bother trying to uphold the Losers' honor or reputation. Come to think of it, Clay looked like he was on his last legs himself.

The guy obviously needed some of Cougar's TLC. Jake left them to it and went to work out, knowing Cougs would keep some leftovers for him.

*

"Roque got screwed over," he said into Cougar's spine, because it was fun to be the big spoon sometimes. "His own XO, and Clay didn't get him anything."

"No, querido," Cougs said, stroking his forearm, which felt suspiciously good considering he'd have bet they had exhausted even his libido, which kicked into high gear whenever Cougs was around. "Clay understands now."

"Understands what?" he asked. He was hardly up for puzzles when his brain had been sucked out through his dick. There was no answer, but the silence seemed to be a happy one. "Hey, sensei, understands what?"

Cougar turned and opened his mouth over Jake's, and the conversation was effectively over. One of these days, he was going to stay strong when Cougs attacked like this. That day was not today.

*

"Moving out, moving out," Roque called. "Grab your gear, let's go. Colonel, we goin' A or B?" Jake was still sleepy, but not so sleepy he couldn't hear that Roque no longer sounded like frustration was his main food group.

"Let's go Q," Clay said, because he thought he was funny. He probably also thought he was smooth, but that was only because all of those sketchy women had skewed his baseline. Jake looked over at him to figure out where Clay's head was at, exactly, and that was when he saw it. There, on Clay's right forearm, bared when he rolled up his sleeves to the elbow — one of them needed to stop watching _Queer Eye_ reruns, and Jake honestly wasn't sure if it should be him, Drunk Clay, or Hungover Clay — was a new tattoo. It looked like some cool, monochromatic abstract art, all spikes and curves, until Jake blinked and saw it was Roque's signature.

"What's Q?" Pooch asked.

"Same as A," Roque said automatically, like finally getting Clay on his wavelength meant the whole team must have psychically bonded too. "Hustle, Jensen."

"I call foul," Jake said, pulling a bag over each shoulder and knowing Cougs was at his six. "That thing cost way more than seven dollars."

"Shut up," Roque said, and smacked him upside the head.


End file.
